Flatworms

[CodeToad]

Well I'm back from school for the summer and my poor nano is infested w/ flatworms. They are starting to get on the corals and the corals don't seem to be pleased, so its time for some drastic action. I suppose the only thing I can do is take the tank down and clean every inch of it by hand, and I suppose I'm ready to do this. Is there anything else I can do while I have the rocks and corals out of the tank to eleminate any flatworms I may miss? Is there something safe I can dip the rocks and corals in for a second to get rid of the worms? ANY help anyone might have would be greatly appreciated!

[mjsandbe]

I have flatworms in my 90 and the sump for my 58. My 58 has no flatworms in it(been this way over a year). I believe this is due to the sixline wrasse. I just got a Solar Fairy Wrasse for the 90 to see if it helps.

What I suggest to people who I trade corals with is to do a fresh water dip of 10-15 seconds or so. The flatworms seem unable to survive in fresh water for even a very short period of time.

I have heard of chemical treatmets for flatworms and also seaslugs. I have tried neither.

[Geoff]

ahh, the old flatworm problem. there are a lot of ideas out there on these. most everything out there does not like to eat them. the jury is still out on six-lined wrasses, most believe they do not eat them. there is polly something else in the tank that does, though. there is a flatworm that supposedly eats the nuisance flatworm. it is an opaque white colour. i had a couple in my tank, but do not anymore, i think they starved because i do not have the nuisance flatworm. i can believe they eat them. the only times i saw these white ones were in the early morning when the light would first hit the tank. they were only in that corner. i am thinking they were looking for the nuisance flatworms in this brighter area of the tank.

these white flatworms would come in on LR. some have them some do not, they are very hard to see. there is a brightly coloured nudi that will eat them also.

HTH,

G~

[MikeS]

I recently solved my year & a half Flatworm problem. When people talk about having hundreds or thousands of FW's they don't understand how bad it can get. I tried all the natural predator's suggested, six line, Nudi's, Manderins and all the other "safe" remedies I got from this and other forums. Nothing made any impact. I was also advised to leave it be and it would probably die off naturally eventually. I had some hope this would happen until I understood just how toxic dead FW's are. Thank God that never happened. I know the purists are not going to like this solution but I finally turned to a new product "Flatworm Exit" by Salifert that I had been reading about here and at Reef Central. My first attempt was a failure, but I learned and the second try was highly successful. There is no question but that Flatworm Exit kills flatworms almost immediately, but that's only half the problem. The bigger problem is getting rid of the toxic waste from the dead flatworms. This can and will kill everything in your tank if you don't get right on it. The first time I treated the tank with everything in it. Without getting in to all the details this didn't work. I lost some fish and the FW's came back. The second time I set up a second tank and used a fresh water purge for the coral and the LR. I also removed the fish, than I treated the tank with the Flatworm Exit. I dosed it 3 times over an hour. Than a siphoned as many dead FW's out as I could. Now the critical part, I used a large power filter packed full of charcoal to remove the toxic waste. I changed the charcoal twice over 24 hrs. It's now a month later, no FW's and everything is very healthy. I left out a lot of details, but this is alrady to long.

[CodeToad]

Thanks for all the suggestions ya'll, Im pretty upset about it. I looked into natural predators, but I think its time something gets done. I think tommorow I am just going to take everything apart and clean it off, freshwater dip it all, and cross my fingers. I suppose if this dosen't work then I will have no choice but to resort to chemicals. I'll keep ya'll posted and feel free to add comments!

[CodeToad]

The cleaning didn't work as well as I had planned, so I went for eXit. I was nervous but I think it worked great! First went through and siphoned as many as I could see, then 1 drop per gallon of the eXit, waited for about 10 minutes and watched them start to float around, sucked them up as many as I could, and changed the filter pad 2 times during this process. Sat with it for about 2 hours, think it was sucessful. None of the corals or my fish seemed upset at all, and all seems fine as of now, and I don't see ANY FLATWORMS

[MikeS]

CodeToad, glad to hear it's working for you. Again, I advise to filter like crazy with carbon and a power filter, and to push the limits on water changes.

[CodeToad]

Originally posted by MikeS
CodeToad, glad to hear it's working for you. Again, I advise to filter like crazy with carbon and a power filter, and to push the limits on water changes.

Thanks for the advice, I replaced some carbon already once today, I think I may do it again later this week, and possibly a waterchange in 2 weeks. I'm just thrilled to have those worms gone!

[MikeS]

Code Toad, again glad things are going well. I actually did 3 20% water changes in the 1st 48 hrs. But as I said before I had more than the average number of FW's.